TRIP BUDDIES
Marco and I were on the wilderness train. Part of a convoy heading towards a set, hoping to make it as stars in a flick called Rogues’ Gallery.
The languished posse had already identified our baselines, “Talk to me.”
I’m Team Us.
Marco’s got that big dick, used to be a hot shot smoke-show ’talent' too.
He’s got even bigger balls to attempt to pull off a move like this. Still, I trusted his pedigree and experience and was therefore a willing protege under his tutelage. Set to make a packet.
“Get the ball rolling Marco old son.”
Marco calls his dick ‘Richard.’ For the most part, it felt like there were three of us on this mission (shout out to Richard. No joke.)
He calls his dick Richard because that’s what he likes to do, destigmatize his old industry. Finds it funny that cock is called cock, such an olde worlde term “Why not call the pussy ‘hen’ then?”
He can’t help but analyse, so subverts happily now.
“We’re gonna bawl ’til we fall.”
Gestalt.
Me: the European gentlemen abroad, on my own mini version of 'The Grand Tour’.
Comfortable in my own skin/uncomfortable in this new one.
Him: a sherpa who can read the lay of these lands.
Alenushka’s fiery tongue lashed tenuous bragging right sequences at the convoy.
We were to plow on with the rest of the wagon train and join Alenushka once we reached the porno belt, “The Filth Belt.”
Despondent and keeping schtum, she ran the numbers and so, rode ahead of us for the final stretch of the track, to prepare the audition process. Her power stance said “Mix it up.”
Opening mornings emptying the contents of our bags. Days later we passed the famed stone totem. In the dry arid heat, a subtle wind blew sand.
In due course our horses pulled into Sex Town, my back worsened “Trot don’t canter,” and looked around: Bummer’s Walk, Candlestick Park.
“Whoa there Kemosabe.”
Towns folk stared at my pitch-black horse.
“They ain’t got the power Hero. Look at “em, all handlebar moustaches and DSL’s.”
The Orifice Office
Suave and debonair, just off Lovers Lane, Alenushka scouted ‘Loving life.’ Paradigms shifted.
“Hold the room.”
A louche ex-Casanova carte blanched, trying to maintain wood.
What a move. He blew out, laissez-faire. Then left the room and industry dejected.
We all felt the connectedness.
Sense perceptions and conditioning.
“A ruthless cull,” Marco stated “Bloodlines mean zero here.”
Such a cruel casting couch.
Waft. Swinging schlongs in the moonlight.
“Can you cry on demand Hero?”
“Probs.”
“Magnifico.”
Upshot:
I flash back to high as a kite jinks me and Mario have had together, reggae sound systems we’ve attended, events, gigs, late night bike rides out of the city. Watching that band that time, with their bassist popping his cheeks, blown back wind tunnel-like in a vortex of sound. Driving to and hanging out in service station Cafés. Driving to free festivals and the buzz on arrival. Spliffs and mellows in a hot summer garden, as a Brazilian girl played on a Spanish guitar, singing songs in Portuguese. The way that bar would have a lock-in and the air would suddenly fill with weed smells. Lighting up a j in the Savoy Cinema whilst watching Casino then getting a jack and coke, because the Savoy kept it old school and still had a bar and intermission. On a liberty cap tip, attending a concert of Holst’s The Planets performed by The National Youth Orchestra in an ornate, empty Theatre Royal. As they played to just us and our friends for the afternoon. Coming up on acid at a Les Misérables theatre production as cannons fired. Baking hash cake and heading to the pub. Returning hours later and our mate’s dad, who we’d left a piece for, is asleep in the same chair he was in when we’d left. Rows and rows of library books, galleries and art, humour humour humour (the core) and Indian food and that Turkish restaurant where they didn’t charge for my girlfriend’s meal. Hǎo chī dim sum at Chinese restaurants, where dish after dish arrived and made up a feast. In beer gardens. Afternoon triple bill cinema showings, leaving the cinema and it’s still light outside. Screenings of Touch of Evil and Easy Rider and Pulp Fiction and the start where the record needle scratches and Jungle Boogie comes on. Walking through the fair with the hum of generators and eating mushy peas. Discovering the best Jamaican food places. Walking with our eyes shut for as long as possible on a Norfolk beach and camping out in the Derbyshire countryside. Cooking on open fires, tripping into the night sky and the daytime colours of nature turning vividly technicolour. Kung fu and sci-fi videos from the corner shop every weekend, continental supermarkets and bands and jams and buying rare records that would go for a bomb in London. Staying up all night and on a whim driving to London and as soon as the car would hit the motorway, it was always my cue to light up a spliff. Arriving in London just before rush hour, wired and weird walking along Abbey Road and going to an Orb concert in Manchester. My first time in Manchester and the still-tripping driver asking us to tone it down in the back of the car as we talked about being in a spaceship. Buying bargains and 1970’s wide-angle mirrors at markets and buying cheap synthesisers and doing gigs, practicing in rehearsal rooms, recording in bedrooms. Returning from a holiday abroad, having a bifta for the first time in two weeks and the sound of King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown just taking off! and festivals and editing and making love, showing love and good good taste and an avant-garde jazz band playing in a warehouse as I made a sculpture. Those regular comics, vintage and record shops and jumping over the fence of the reservoir with some cans and reading in the morning in bed.
On the set of Rogues’ Gallery Vol 3.
BTS with the hispanic guys “We’re all green but we’re down.”
Long braids.
“Why don’t you come here and give a brother some love?”
Yanked. Hypnotic.
Thrill.
The glorious beginning.
Stage 1
I moved on from the coconut shy to the kissing booth.
Flux of carnal experiences.
The grotty set consisted of covered cages. Dogs on chains, b wire.
There were
this, that, and the third.
Screwballs, many such cases.
Alenushka proud of us. She blows only hot.
“Chipper.” Gene Vincent plays.
“Work on your bodies okay boys?”
Buddy Holly plays.
2. Beyond winter
Impulsive wild eyes splatter painting of nature and clearly demarcated and sedated views.
Pretext: Empiricism.
3. The tainted-
At Emerson: “What do you teach?”
“Journalism.”
“Never mind the inaccurate shards of your thesis.”
My subversive face.
Bummed out counterculture.
4. Candle magic:
Fit for the upper levels.
Different kinds of platforms.
Polemical tag along.
And one time Alenushka was playing a recording of Buddhist meditative music but all I could focus on was the digital reverb.
5. Pilgrims walked
“Are you coming up yet?”
Blowjob hell.
Non-responsive.
Alenushka fuming.
“He’s ready to receive his entry.”
“Stand back. I can feel his living mind gathering power and mass.”
Competition for affection.
Milling, Marco looked hunted, like “What now?”
A Bar room brawl stampede.
Strong way to sunlight a new choice.
6. The final Friday
At the soul’s dark hour.
Bringing our Z Game.
“I’m buggin’ bro.”
Buttered bones, too quirked up to be operatives.
“Ha ha ha ha,” Hoi polloi.
Alenushka scolding.
“Yello?”
Hats off to rebellion and revenge!
I can feel the hatred steaming off her like heat (join the queue, quite frankly.)
Alenushka blows her top.
Cest la vie.
A machine, a box, a caddie. A portable tea luncheon set.
Amongst the explorers, a young fair-skinned, deprived looking boy (Hero). In scruffy T-shirt, shorts and sandals.
That boy looked horrified as they opened the casket and would’ve surely bolted away from the expedition group, had he not been rooted to the spot in fear.
The coffin immediately eroded a rotten scent (Marco), which made the hounds whine and recoil.
In memoriam, the flick now an epitaph, bravo.
Marco and I, jive shit heels, return to the convoy. Frontier again.
End of story.
by Jai Knight
Jai Knight's writing can be found at https://jaiknightwriting.weebly.com